Feature
June 7, 2010

Targa Florio: A Special Place in History

by Jens "McGonigle" Lindblad

What do the following have in common – a Fiat 600, Graham Hill, a Porsche 911 convertible, the Lancia Stratos, Sir Stirling Moss, and you?

In 1957 a Fiat 600 was recorded as the winner of the Targa Florio road race in Sicily, Italy, a race Graham Hill won in 1960. The Porsche 911 Targa convertible is named after the Targa Florio. Now the rest becomes obvious: The Stratos won the race in 1974 and Sir Stirling won the Targa in 1955. And you can now become a part of history too, by driving the virtual rendition of the 45 miles of the Targa Florio circuit in Grand Prix Legends.

The Targa Florio was created in 1906 by Vincenzo Florio,a wealthy pioneer racing driver and automobile enthusiast, who liked to drive his cars fast, on the narrow and twisty Sicilian public roads.

At its inception the race was a staggering 277 miles (446 km) in length, later it was shortened to 92 miles (148 km) and finally to 45 miles (72 km), which still amounts to three times the length of the Nurburgring Nordschleife.

Drivers would practice for a week before the race, often running their race cars with temporary license plates, driving among the daily traffic.

Taking drivers on public roads during practice and the race itself, through villages with spectators right beside the road not unlike spectators at rally events, the fastest average speeds reached were just below 80 mph (128,5 kmh). The cars were the same that also raced at Le Mans and in the World Sports Cars Championship; like Porsche 908 and 917, the Ferrari 312P and the Alfa Romeo 33TT.

Just imagine an Audi R15 or a Modern Porsche RS Spyder thundering through your local village, the drivers on the look-out for stray animals crossing the street, or in the countryside for flocks of sheep blocking the road!

In 1972 Helmut Marko called the race “totally insane” and he wasn't really looking forward to participating. During the last two laps of the race however he drove like a man possessed on the “verge of disaster” and set a new lap record where he gained 2 minutes on the leading Ferrari of Arturo Merzario.

The race attracted big names from Formula 1, World Sports Car Championship (WSC), Le Mans, and Rallying: Rodriguez, Redman, Gijs van Lennep, Jo Bonnier, Leo Kinnunen and the aforementioned Graham Hill and Sir Stirling Moss. These gentlemen were certainly versatile!

Parts of the track are still being used for rallying events.

The Virtual Track

Quite some time ago, work was started on the creation of a virtual rendition of the Targa Florio for Grand Prix Legends. A massive and daunting task considering that some of the roads used in the classic 45 mile layout of the race track have been decommissioned, been left in a state of disrepair or disappeared almost entirely.

With GPL being an internationally renowned title in the racing simulation community, luckily Italian GPL fans on Sicily were quickly offering their assistance as local investigators and armed with digital cameras they went on inspection tours of the less well documented locations concerning track lay out and surroundings.

A team of the GPL community's most illustrious modders diligently worked for years until finally in late 2009 the track was finished and released to the GPL community.

GPL was never intended to support such a long track, the benchmark for the longest track in any race simulator had for many years been GPL's own, mighty “Green Hell”; The Nordscheife Nürburgring, located in the Eifel mountains with its daunting 14 miles per lap.

Nevertheless, the industrious modding community for GPL managed to overcome the limit concerning maximum track length to reproduce a stunning track.

Lacking “hero-filters” of the sort you'd see in Top Gear, HDR, bloom, blur and anything newer than DirectX 7 — real modders can do without those fancy mod-cons thank-you-very-much — the team has created a gorgeous and awe inspiring virtual version of the Targa Florio.

It oozes Mediterranean ambiance, sun, Barolo, dust and oil, and is so spectacular that you'd be hard pressed to keep your eyes on the road because there are so many details and so much to see. Even when “inspecting” the track and its immediate surroundings from imaginative vantage points (euphemism for driving off the road and ending on the roof in a ditch, facing in the wrong direction) everything looks perfect and I only noticed some very minor slight clipping of the textures on one such occasion.

Congratulations are due to all who helped bring this historic track to the world of virtual racing. This version of the track would make any simulation burst with pride. GPL track making has reached new heights and Targa Florio is a benchmark release.

A Lap of Targa

The lap guide for such a gigantic track can be described in a word: overwhelming. It is an impressive experience!

From the start and to Cerda: Twisty, tight left-handers and right-handers, with some hairpin corners quite occasionally but you arrive at Cerda quite early on in the lap thus you will greet it as the first welcome distraction on the long route. You are going inland and the landscape seems more barren and scorched by the sun.

The start of another 45 miles / 72 km lap

Downtown Cerda

Now comes another tight and twisty section with more left-handers, right handers, and hairpins. You're on the verge of giving it all up, you don't know any more for how long you've driven, you start feeling dizzy perhaps and you wish to join the rest of the world and quit because concentration is going off fast, but you press on because you want be there to be greeted by the sight of Collesano, a most welcome mark of your progress and signifying that you are well past half way. The rest of the lap is pure pleasure.

Collesano

From Collesano onward towards Campofelice: The mountains are quite spectacular and breathtaking to watch but we must not allow ourselves be too distracted by the marvelous landscape although we notice that the vegetation is increasing and producing more variation in lush colors as we travel, still along tight and twisty sections of road, towards the coastline and Campofelice, the most spectacular sight and well worth the lap time of 50, 40 or 30 minutes.

The town of Campofelice on the Mediterranean Coast

Having made it this far and enjoying the sight of Campofelice is wonderful reward. Another equally mind-blowing reward comes almost immediately after: a regular and very long piece of straight road!

Floor it! and let that engine in the rear scream! In fact, first time I raced down this straight I promptly blew my engine, the needle on my dash going well past the red line, in sheer exultation at coming close to finishing my first lap of Targa.

A few final turns and twisty sections and you suddenly find that you are back at the hairpin left-hander that was the first turn you took after leaving the pit exit.

An early version of the yet to be released FIA World Sports Car Championship mod has been used for my screen shots (perks following the job) as I believe that this mod is progressing satisfactorily towards completion in the not too distant future, and I can tell you that running these beasts on the twisty narrow roads in Sicily makes the experience unbelievably good. It simply makes perfectly good sense with immersion and its extremely fun.

Click here for a 100+ image Flash slide show of this new WSC mod in action at Targa Florio.

While you practice and try to commit the 567 turns to memory, take some time to enjoy the scenery!

Countryside Impressions

Past walls and over Roman aqueducts, from barren rocky terrains to fertile Mediterranean soil

ADCs Big Race

There's really nothing average about the Average Drivers Club (ADC). The club is quite exceptional in the fact that since July 2000 it has promoted gentleman-racing using Grand Prix Legends and in later years, adding GTR, its successors and GTL to its curriculum. With the club consisting of three divisions; an American, a European and an Australian division it is global in reach and as such quite unique.

Each month the ADC hosts a GPL Big Race. This is an event that is timed to permit all the Divisions within the ADC to race together in one event, hence the title.

May’s Big Race was run on the legendary Targa Florio circuit on Sicily, using the 1965 Grand Prix Legends mod.

The ADC invited all members of SimHQ to take part in this race, as a sort of GPL Festival, and we at SimHQ would like to thank the ADC for setting up this event and extending their invitation to us.

Hopefully more such events will follow, and SimHQ members with an ongoing love-affair with Grand Prix Legends, like myself, will get their historic racing fix rekindled and catered for in company with fellow gentleman drivers.

Certainly the ADC will welcome you whether you are a seasoned campaigner or a rookie in their regular GPL events.

Downloads

Many of you have a love for GPL but haven't loaded it in a long time. Here is a complete step-by-step installation guide how to get yourself back into the GPL world.

Now its time to see for yourself! Download the Targa Florio for Grand Prix Legends. Click the image on page 2 of the "newspaper".

Author's System Specs

• Processor: Intel i7-920
• Motherboard: Gigabyte EX58-UD3R
• Memory: 6 GB RAM (Kingston)
• Hard Drive(s): 1 Tb internal hard disk + Western Digital External 300 GB hard disk
• Video Card: NVIDIA GTX 275 / GeForce 191.07 drivers
• Controller: Logitech G25 / 5.08.146 drivers
• NaturalPoint TrackIR5
• Windows 7 Professional
• Broadband 4096/512

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